stefan bouzarovski - services and vulnerability: approaching domestic energy deprivation as a...
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Energy services and vulnerability:Building a global framework to conceptualize and
address domestic energy deprivation
Professor Stefan BouzarovskiCentre for Urban Energy and Resilience, University of Manchester
Starting points• Growing conceptual and terminological
interest in the terms energy and fuel poverty
• Overcoming the affordability-access binary
• Need for moving beyond incomes, prices and infrastructure investment in the understanding of fuel or energy poverty (Bouzarovski 2013)
• Positioning energy deprivation as an issue of human security and a planetary scale problem (Sovacool 2011)
Arguments
• All forms of energy and fuel poverty – in developed and developing countries alike – are underpinned by a common condition: The inability to attain a socially- and materially-necessitated level of domestic energy services
• The relationship between needs and services is shaped by multiple socio-technical pathways and factors
• The driving forces of domestic energy deprivation can be seen via a vulnerability approach that emphasizes issues of resilience and risk
‘Fuel poverty comes of age’
• A widely recognized societal challenge among key academic, practitioner and policy-making circles
• Underlying causes commonly reduced to low incomes, high energy prices and poor energy efficiency
• Existing frameworks increasingly applied to study issues outside the UK and Ireland
‘Energy poverty’ in the developing world
• Largely a question of ‘access to modern energy’ (Pachauri and Spreng 2004; Sagar 2005)
• Extensive impacts on well-being and health: estimated 1.5 million killed every year by fumes and smoke from open cooking fires (World Bank 2014)
• ‘Fuel poverty mostly occurs in relatively wealthy countries with cold climates’ … whereas ‘energy poverty occurs across all climates but mostly in poor countries’ (Li et al 2014: 480).
New approaches
• Binary division between fuel/energy poverty complicated by situations where access and affordability are intertwined e.g. in China, South America or European periphery
• Linear logic of energy ladder and energy stacking increasingly challenged (Hiemstra-van der Horst and Hovorka 2008)
• Increasing focus on dynamics of recognition and procedure in the rise of fuel poverty (Walker and Day 2012; Braubach and Ferrand 2013; Hall et al. 2013)
Energy services and needs (1)
• ‘Benefits that energy carriers produce for human well being’ (Modi et al. 2005)
• People do not demand kWhs but a warm and well-lit home (Haas et al 2008)
• Conventional metrics do not capture the satisfaction received by the final user (Petrova et al 2013)
Energy services and needs (2)
• A single energy carrier can offer multiple energy services
• One type of energy service may be provided by different carriers, and even non-energy services
• Services represent hybrid assemblages of social and technical networks across multiple scales
• Services satisfy needs, which are at the core of human functionings
Implications• Biological energy needs are universal, but
social needs are relative: ‘basic needs’ approaches are problematic
• When measuring energy deprivation we should ultimately be interested in the relationship between needs and services
• Energy service deprivation can be seen in global terms, although the pathways through which it occurs may be context-dependent
• Poverty thinking in itself is insufficient: vulnerability frameworks offer a more robust perspective on the drivers of deprivation
Primary renewables
Mechanical power
Solid fuels, derivatives
Liquid fuels, derivatives
Natural gas, derivatives
Electricpower
Secondary heat
Space heating
Water heating
Space cooling
Refrigeration
Cooking
Drying
Lighting
Appliances
IT
Energy chain
Conversion to ‘useful’
energy
AccessAffordability
NeedsPractices
EfficiencyFlexibilityCarriers Services
Indirect energy services
Household demand
Household demand
Primary renewables
Mechanical power
Solid fuels, derivatives
Liquid fuels, derivatives
Natural gas, derivatives
Electricpower
Secondary heat
Space heating
Water heating
Space cooling
Refrigeration
Cooking
Drying
Lighting
Appliances
IT
System of provision
Conversion to ‘useful’
energy
Carriers Services
Indirect energy services
AccessAffordability
NeedsPractices
EfficiencyFlexibility
Factor Components Stressors
Access Poor availability of energy carriers appropriate to meet household
needs
External
Affordability High ratio between cost of fuels and household incomes, including
role of tax systems or assistance schemes
External/
internal
Flexibility Inability to move to a form of energy service provision that is
appropriate to household needs
Internal
Energy
efficiency
Disproportionately high loss of useful energy during energy
conversions in the home
Internal
Needs Mismatch between household energy requirements and available
energy services; for social, cultural, economic or health reasons
Internal
Practices A household may lack knowledge about support programmes or
ways of using energy effectively in the home
Internal/
external
Concluding thoughts
• Domestic energy deprivation hinges upon the ‘appliances, infrastructures, social norms and human action’ (Bates et al., 2012) within which the residential environment of the home is ‘bound and reproduced’
• Energy service poverty is not static and does not necessarily affect demographically distinct groups
• It is embedded in urban and regional landscapes and forms of political participation – which means policy responses need to address these spheres rather than just affordability, access and energy efficiency
• Energy service poverty can be seen as a global issue … We need a planetary approach to address the problem
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